Former PM Malcolm Turnbull continues to make a fool of himself with climate comment
While former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull continues to lash out at the government, the facts remain very stubborn when it comes to the extent of bushfires and the return of rain, writes Alan Jones.
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One of the great freedoms of a democratic society is that people are free to make fools of themselves.
Few people, in recent times, have exercised that freedom more thoroughly than Malcolm Turnbull.
With rain pelting down everywhere, Mr Turnbull last week likened climate change deniers, within the Liberal Party, to terrorists.
I’m not too sure who these climate change deniers are.
Everyone concedes that there are changes in the climate; that is, every sensible person, though there do not seem to be too many on Mr Turnbull’s side who seem willing to apply a bit of common sense to what is hardly a debate.
No one who does not believe some of the nonsense that is articulated on so-called climate change, is afforded anything other than ridicule.
Mr Turnbull wants a Green New Deal to shift the economy off fossil fuels, precisely it seems, what Adam Bandt, the newly-elected leader of the minority Greens movement was arguing last week – the same fellow who called the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, a “threat to life” and a “climate criminal” and yesterday accused big business of “killing people”.
But back to Malcolm Turnbull.
There he was arguing that “these bushfires are utterly without precedent in our history” and that “the effect on Australia’s image abroad has been profound.”
Well, if you prosecute untruths abroad, you are likely to damage Australia’s image.
TURNBULL CHANGES TUNE
Speaking at a renewable energy summit, less than a week ago, Mr Turnbull asked: “How is it that a country that has seen, for the first time, thousands of its own citizens huddling on its beaches under red and black skies waiting to be rescued by the navy, does not find itself in the front line of action to stop global warming?”
It is nice, emotive and alarmist stuff.
He went on: “These fires are utterly without precedent in our history — this is the inevitable consequence of a hotter and drier climate, the consequence of global warming.”
Then, by inference, he had to have a stab at Scott Morrison: “This is a political failure — we understand the science — the forecasts of years ago have sadly been proven to be true — it’s exactly as was predicted, we need to stop burning coal, stop burning fossil fuels, and move to renewables.”
The hypocrisy of Mr Turnbull is breathtaking.
When Mr Turnbull was unfortunately prime minister in March 2018, the beautiful little community of Tathra was appallingly affected by bushfire for two days – 69 houses, 30 caravans and cabins destroyed and 39 other houses were damaged.
The likely cause was the failure of electrical infrastructure.
The Greens tried to link the Tathra fire to climate change.
Mr Turnbull’s response was: “I’m disappointed that the Greens would try to politicise an event like this. You can’t attribute any particular event, whether it’s flood or fire, or drought, or a storm, to climate change.”
Hypocrisy, thy name is Malcolm Turnbull.
But he also said recently on February 5: “These fires are utterly without precedent in our history — this is the inevitable consequence of a hotter and drier climate, the consequence of global warming.”
Hang on! February 7, four days ago, marked 11 years since fires broke out across Victoria, fanned by gusty winds and high temperatures.
It wasn’t called Black Saturday for nothing.
450,000ha were burnt out.
173 people died.
414 were injured.
There were approximately 400 fires recorded on that Black Saturday.
2029 houses were destroyed.
And this man, once prime minister, uses the prestige of the office to tell untruths to the world — “these fires are utterly without precedent in our history”.
February 6, five days ago, was the 169th anniversary of the Black Thursday bushfires in 1851.
Malcolm, I don’t think we had coal-fired power stations way back then.
One report said: “The temperatures became torrid and on the morning of February 6, 1851, the air which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace … a fierce wind arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour until, about noon, it blew with the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means, it wrapped the whole countryside in a sheet of flame, fierce, awful and irresistible.”
The fire became known as Black Thursday, on February 6, 1851, though the fires had been burning for some weeks.
At 11am, in Melbourne, the temperature was 47C in the shade with a hot wind blowing.
It is said that 12 people died and 5 million hectares, a quarter of the state of Victoria, was burnt.
Malcolm Turnbull, aware that the public are waking up to the global warming hoax, adopts now the strategy of fiddling with the truth.
The bushfires are “utterly without precedent in our history”.
No one is seeking to dilute the impact and the tragedy of any bushfire, or any natural disaster, but as Chris Kenny wrote splendidly for News Corp at the weekend: “Climate politics in this country are so wacky that informed adults ought to scoff at them and move on.”
ARE FIRES REALLY LARGER?
One such informed adult is Dr Bjorn Lomborg, who spoke last night in Canberra on this very issue.
He has recently made statistical comparisons about the bushfire crisis. The comparisons make uncomfortable reading for Malcolm “utterly without precedent in our history” Turnbull.
Dr Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and is regarded as a world authority on these issues.
He has pointed out that in 1900, 11% of Australia burned annually through bushfires.
These days the figure is around 5%.
The same is true internationally.
Globally, bushfires burn less land than before; in fact, Dr Lomborg has argued that the global burnt area has shrunk by more than a third.
And this reduction in fires has been recorded by NASA satellites.
Now remember, we are being asked to believe that “global warming” has accelerated the crisis which is “unprecedented.”
Yet satellite data indicates that the amount of Australian land affected by bushfires declined by one third between 1997 and 2018.
Indeed, Dr Lomborg says, “Australia’s current fire season has seen less area burned than in previous years.”
He argues that, “Up to January 26 this year, the current bushfire crisis had affected 19.4 million hectares.”
But he says, “The seasonal burns recorded by satellites over earlier, similar time frames show an average of 37 million hectares were ravaged by bushfires”; and that the current crisis, tragic and overwhelming as it has been, “has seen 2.5% of Australia burnt compared with an average of 4.8% over the previous decade.”
It has suited the climate change alarmists to totally misrepresent this to the world in order to build a case for an increasingly discredited and minority band of climate evangelists.
Dr Lomborg has said that claims by people that our fires are “unprecedented in scale” are simply wrong.
None of this is to downplay the severity of the current crisis, but merely to put it into perspective.
Dr Lomborg said, “a new review of available data suggests it is not actually possible to detect a link between global warming and fire in Australia today.”
He further argued, “even if Australia were dramatically to change its climate policy overnight, the impact on fires would be effectively zero”.
Of course you cannot have a fire without fuel.
Commonsense, or what’s left of it, would tell you that the ultimate responsibility lies with those who argued for years against sensible hazard reduction.
BUT WAIT, DAMS ARE FILLING
Malcolm Turnbull is not on his own in misrepresenting the facts to seek to obscure the flaws in his global warming alarmism.
With rain pelting down everywhere, thankfully, do you remember this bloke, Flannery?
Tim Flannery. He was made Australian of the Year in 2007 because his utterances on climate change were regarded with biblical certainty.
They included his prediction that global warming would so dry our continent that only desalination plants would save our biggest cities from disaster; and that cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam filling rains … and even the rain that falls “isn’t going to fill our dams and river systems” and “the water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009”.
In relation to bushfires and climate change, Mr Turnbull accused the right wing media, whoever they are, of “basically operating like terrorists!”
The talented Matt Canavan is an unfortunate omission from the Morrison cabinet.
He’s been replaced by the former sugar cane farmer, Keith Pitt. Mr Pitt says Australia should put cheaper power before reducing emissions and he will back new coal projects, renewable energy and nuclear power as long as it was cheap and kept the lights on.
He said, “I don’t care if it runs on chook manure, as long as it is affordable and reliable … I believe in doing things that work.”
I suppose the moral of the story is, we want more sugar cane farmers and fewer Malcolm Turnbulls.
We have one of the former; we are fortunately rid of the latter.
That has to be a plus.
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